Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Ignis Fatuus

Above the decomposing corpse of the Party of Personal Responsibility, conspiratorial apparitions are constantly fizzing in and out of existence. They bubble up from ancient, rotting Hate Radio talking points and the unquiet graves of the Southern Strategy, flare feebly to life, and then fall apart and slide feebly back into the Great Wingnut Swamp.

While these fool's fires burn, the denizens of the Great Wingnut Swamp follow them wherever they lead as zealously as any Wise Man from the East following the Star of David. They point to each new apparition of bullshit and Fox News vapor as proof that their idiotic ideology is, in fact, the One True Faith.

In a damning new report by the Smoking Gun, a crucial witness in the grand jury deciding whether to indict former Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson is revealed as having fabricated her eyewitness account of the altercation between Wilson and unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9. "Witness 40," identified as 45-year-old Sandra McElroy, has a documented history of racist remarks, criminal behavior, and mental illness.

-- leaving behind the same stink of racism and willful ignorance that the last dozen, collapsed wingnut conspiracies left in their wake.

But here's the thing. The real story here is not that -- surprise! -- the Right's entire narrative and the prosecutor's entire kangaroo court hinged on the unhinged ramblings of some mentally ill liar.

The real story here is that no matter how many times the Right's ridiculous fairy tales fall apart, it has no effect whatsoever on their disposition or their worldview.

They will go right on clinging to the lie du jour like a dog hanging on to the last bone on Earth right up until it disintegrates completely. Then they will actively seek out the next, comforting lie and fall for it just as hard,

The real story is that there is no point in this cycle at which the Right ever becomes amenable to reason -- no point at which they will look in the mirror and feel a flicker of shame or a twinge of remorse.

Like old junkies, they got hooked on a steady diet of lies long ago, and unless they are forced to quit, they will go right on feeding that monkey and destroying this country until they day they die.

n1ck: On the contrary -- since cognitive dissonance is defined as "anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like", I would submit that conservatives are actually immune to cognitive dissonance, since conservatives have demonstrated themselves capable of accepting several completely contradictory propositions at the same time without batting an eye. To use a contemporary example, conservatives believe all of the following things to be true:

• Barack Obama is a brutal, tyrannical, iron-fisted dictator who brazenly does whatever he pleases, regardless of our Constitution, international opinion, or any laws anywhere.• Barack Obama is a weak-willed, sniveling coward who goes around apologizing for America because he is ashamed of everything about his country and is terrified of offending our enemies.• Barack Obama is an inhumanly brilliant master manipulator who has been systematically carrying out a byzantine long-term plot to destroy America since before the time of his own birth. • Barack Obama is such an incompetent boob and mental midget that he cannot string two words together without the aid of a Teleprompter.

Reassuring or comforting or re-enforcing of ones pre-conceptions or simply useful to ones agenda and those of ones comrades, lies are the tools of social manipulation and cultural stagnation. How those tools are employed and their efficacy is determined by how often and by whom they are repeated and to what extent they are shouted down by those that they harm. Not to mention which side has the the better swords.

""forced" to quit." A few years back, you had predicted (if that's the right word)that something like a shooting Civil War would occur within 7 years in the U.S. At least, I thought that was you. Is this of a piece with that observation? I think the much-ballyhooed polarization is good for us, and the line finally has to be drawn somewhere. Failing that, we fail.

That's why I expect a great deal of civil violence before we can wake up from this nightmare. Eventually the weight of reality will make their willful ignorance impossible to maintain. That's when they will be the most dangerous.

People on the left who dream of violence are drinking from the same cup of authoritarianism that has poisoned the Republicans already. Violence will only confirm the racist perspective. The right wing has far more guns, and they probably have the US military if push really comes to shove.

Bill, first off I don't know anybody on the left that "dream of violence". That an absurd statement. The only violent rhetoric I've seen come from the right. Murder fantasy runs rampant among the wingnuts. My comment was merely a prediction of future events based on the ever increasing insanity of the political right.

To pick up on a theme, it is becoming obvious now that Bob McCollough's plan was to "Both Sides" Darren Wilson a non indictment.

What really happened that day? The 16 people who saw Wilson fire on a kid on his knees with his hands in the air; or Wilson and Witness 40, who we know was lying? Who can say, we'll have to leave it there; Back to you Wolf

Just letting you know I footnoted your essay on a post I made on another forum.

I called it "The Little Conservative Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!'"

Much like your Tea Belly Sneeches and Little Red State Fundy, it takes a classic story to illustrate modern political discourse. Needless to say, the variation on the classic story about crying "wolf" is there is never a point where the little conservative boy loses credibility. The media villagers keep scrambling out asking "where?" every single time and by the time they find there is no wolf, they never seem to care and the little conservative boy cries "wolf" again.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-30463.html

Feel free to use that "Little Conservative Boy Who Cried 'Wolf'" idea in any future blog post of yours. I'm sure you'll spin it into a better yarn than I did.